To often I hear the same question over and over: “I find no matter what I do and how hard we practice, we have problems with ‘serve receive.’ My players can not pass a serve to the setter. Is there any special formula you tell players to get them to perfect their forearm passing?
I can think of four things that will affect serve recieve the greatest:
- athleticism
- proper fundamentals
- practice
- deciding IN ADVANCE what ball is whose.
ATHLETICISM: Not much coaching here. I've seen great athletes who have horrible fundamentals that are pretty good passers. In fact, I saw one at Virginia Beach a few weekends ago. Now, if we teach these athletes proper fundamentals, WATCH OUT, we'll have an outstanding back row player and our setters will love us forever! hahaha. That's the one and only thing about serve receive that we, as coaches, have no influence over. Now, let's talk about why we get the big bucks!!!
PROPER FUNDAMENTALS: Since most of your kids aren't "Karch Karaly's," we must teach them proper fundamentals. Here are few hints that could cover an entire chapter in the next volleyball book you buy!
- a) #1 rule of serve recieve: "Upper body still, lower body does the work."
- b) I heard a coach say last year, "Pass the ball at your thighs or use your hands" which is a little extreme, but he was trying to teach his kid to MOVE to the ball and not reach.
- c) Another key phrase is "Early and Still" which refers to the platform. Girls who poke, pray, swing, etc., will only pass well when they're lucky.
PRACTICE: After the fundamentals are mastered, it's practice, practice, practice. Teachers require kids in math class to practice, and it must happen on athletic teams also. And in volleyball, if you only can pass 80% of the opponent's serves, that's NOT average. That's NOT a grade of C. Your serve receive MUST be better than that. If your opponents win because they're outserving you, then what's going to be your excuse? Poor athletes? NOPE. Poor fundamentals? Well, maybe, and that's YOUR fault!! :( Not enough practice? NOT on my team! haha. The higher the quality of a school team I coach, the MORE we work on serve receive. "We can't beat anyone who's any good if we can't put the ball in our setter's hands!" My teams have gone entire seasons where we out-serve received our opponents in each and every match. It's fun to out-pass and out-dig your opponents and we take a lot of pride in it!! We even POST our team's and our opponent's passing stats and smile!!
WHAT BALL IS WHOSE: I let my team decide this UNTIL they show me that they're incapable of that. Then I do it for them! In other words, either they decide who had the short, the corner, etc. or I do it for them. This past jr. season, we would get beat in a seam of our serve reception about once a day. And that's GREAT for 8th and 9th graders. Next, we try to position ourselves so "We respect their deep serve, but we'll take away their short serve." In other words, we're ready for the normal serve, but if a girl tries to beat us short, she won't be able to! At least, that's what we SAY!
